GW visited the Holthausen brothers, inventors of the Hesla: a hydrogen-powered Tesla that takes you eleven hundred kilometres.A car drives through the desert, the driver parched, near despair. And then, already close to giving up, he remembers that his salvation was close at hand all along. He gets out of the car, holds a cup under the exhaust and then drinks it empty. Out of the exhaust comes pure water. It is just a movie, but Science Fiction it is by no means.
Ever since it was discovered in the early nineteenth century that adding electricity to water releases hydrogen and oxygen (so-called electrolysis), and that conversely, combining hydrogen and oxygen produces water and electric power (the fuel cell effect), people have dreamt (Jules Verne in The Secret Island!) about a world with hydrogen as the main energy carrier.Just under two hundred years after its invention, that hydrogen revolution now seems to be really taking off. Mainly due to the urgent CO2 issue and the need to find a medium in which to store (surplus) wind and solar energy, providing a buffer in times when the same sun and wind fail. The mode of transport of choice in that new world: the hydrogen car. Experiments have been around before. The Necar 1 was the world's first hydrogen car in 1994.
General Motors and Ford followed in the early 20th century. Fiat came up with the 'Panda Hydrogen'. However, the big leap forward failed to materialise. But now it really is about to happen, says Stefan Holthausen, CEO of the eponymous family business in Hoogezand, which has focused on converting cars (electric and diesel) to hydrogen for several years. Why it's really coming along now? The CO2 story, of course, the fossil fuel car has to disappear. But besides that, the hydrogen car has quite a few advantages over its direct competitor, the battery car. Most important: you refuel the car in a few minutes, and the range of a hydrogen car is much greater.
Nuclear power taboo
They were true hydrogen pioneers. A hydrogen engineering course did not (and does not) exist. They started with a model car. They now have a self-built hydrogen plant and hydrogen filling station and are converting cars on a large scale: special vehicles for municipal services, but also vans like the Renault Kangoo ZE and the Mercedes Sprinter. 'Those are electric ex-factory, but with only 100-150 km range. 'No one can do anything with that, yes, if you live in the city. The hydrogen fuel cell then works as a range extender.'We are standing by a truck. Holthausen points out the components in the engine compartment. The high-pressure hydrogen tank, the fuel cell where hydrogen (from the tank) and oxygen (from the air) are passed through a membrane, releasing heat, water and electricity. Electricity which in turn powers the electric motor. The residual products, heat and water, are disposed of: the latter via the exhaust, in other words.''Car manufacturers are now working on it worldwide,' says Holthausen, 'in Germany Daimler-Benz and VW. But they are a decade behind Toyota and Hyundai. Japan in particular has taken to hydrogen. After Fukushima, nuclear power was taboo. Hydrogen they see as a godsend. Toyota has invested billions in it.''Recently, Mercedes came to our filling station in Groningen to fill up a Mercedes GLC Hydrogen, a beautiful car, but under the lid is Toyota technology. Mercedes has to, because they, together with VW, Shell and Total have made a deal with Merkel. Shell and Total will build (subsidised) 400 filling stations, in return Mercedes and VW will supply the cars by 2023. Meanwhile, quite a few of those hydrogen stations have already been built, only Daimler and VW don't have those cars ready yet. There are now say three hundred hydrogen cars driving around Germany. Shell and Total are a bit angry about that. That's why Daimler and VW have now just bought technology from Toyota and Hyundai.'The Mercedes is the fifth production car after the Hyundai ix35 FCEV (2013), the Toyota Mirai (2014), the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell (2016) and the Hyundai Nexo (2018). Sales numbers are modest for now. Around seven thousand hydrogen cars are on the road worldwide, of which about 5,500 are Toyota Mirais. A few dozen of the Mirai have been sold in NL.
Grant necessary
The hydrogen car is at the same point as the electric car a decade ago. It is the story of the chicken and the egg. There are hardly any hydrogen stations yet, and as long as there aren't any, few cars will be sold, and as long as that is the case, production will remain expensive (only with economies of scale can the costs come down), and thus no cars will be sold and thus no hydrogen stations will be built. And so on.Some 50 passenger cars are now on the road in the Netherlands. There are as many as four filling stations (in Rhoon, Arnhem, Delfzijl and Helmond). The vicious circle can only be broken with the help of the government, says Holthausen, just as happened with battery cars before. The purchase of hydrogen cars and the construction of filling stations should be subsidised. A start has now been made on the latter. 'Ten will be added this year, in cities across the country, and another ten next year. Shell and Total are building four each, we are doing two. It's a package deal, those cities will run their municipal vehicles - rubbish trucks, sweepers et cetera - on hydrogen.'On a loading floor are about ten batteries. 'This is about twenty kilowatt-hours (kWh),' says Holthausen, 'a van needs 40 kWh. And that weighs quite a bit. It's about 14.5 kilograms of battery per kWH. A Tesla contains 85 kWh. So that's a thousand kilos of batteries. Hydrogen, however, weighs almost nothing; you can drive a hundred kilometres on a kilo of hydrogen. A hydrogen system is many times lighter, which also increases the payload. Not to mention the gigantic mountain of battery waste that results from all those Tesla's. A little further on, a 2CV, a duckling, runs on hydrogen. A marketing thingy, that goes without saying, no production prospects. Then we stand in front of a light blue Tesla S. Or at least, it's the Hesla, says Holthausen. They fitted the Tesla with an additional hydrogen system: a range extender. A range of 1,100 kilometres was the result. The news went around the world, but all who responded, not Tesla.
New process
Hydrogen is nonsense, shouts Elon Musk (whose SpaceX rockets are all hydrogen-fuelled, by the way). Hydrogen is inefficient claims the Tesla frontman, because you first need to generate energy to make hydrogen, and most of that energy comes from fossil fuels: hydrogen from energy is ultimately not that clean at all. The same obviously applies to charging his own batteries, and what he doesn't mention is that hydrogen can be generated just fine via large-scale wind farms. Moreover, scientists connected to the University of Leuven have very recently invented a process that skips that extra step altogether. They developed 'solar panels' that produce hydrogen directly from sunlight and water vapour in the air. Toyota has now started a trial of the screens. Before it will be used on a large scale we will be some time away.But Musk, who has just had a giant battery factory built, seems to have plenty of reason to be somewhat worried, and not just because of those revolutionary 'solar screens'. Nowhere in the world (apart from Japan) are more hydrogen cars driving around than in Musk's own California (thanks to State subsidies).The forecasts from competitors like Toyota and Hyundai do not lie. Huge fuel cell factories are under construction. Hyundai aims to produce 500,000 hydrogen-electric vehicles annually by 2030. By 2040, a quarter of cars will run on hydrogen, they think at there (and not only there, a recent survey makes it clear that the Dutch car industry sees it the same way). As a Toyota chief engineer recently explained: 'There is a market for battery cars, we think. Small shopping cars and cars that are driven no more than 100 kilometres in a day can work fine with a charging cable. Everything else: hydrogen. That's where our heart lies.' The range of those cars will increase significantly in the process. The next-generation Mirai will have a range of 750 km (the Hyundai Nexo already achieves 600 km), a range of 1,000 km by 2025 is the goal.
Other applications
And then there is something else that Musk will be watching anyway: the growing interest in (and investment in) hydrogen from oil giants like Total and Shell (Shell's CEO Marjan van Loon drives a hydrogen car herself). The background to this: hydrogen is not only interesting when it comes to clean mobility, it can also serve as an alternative to fossil fuel elsewhere. In industry, for instance - the powers needed there can never be provided by batteries - or in aviation: hydrogen experiments are already under way, it works, batteries on the other hand are simply too heavy for that. Moreover, the pure oxygen released in hydrogen production is an important product in the (medical, chemical) industry. Hydrogen is much more than mobility in short, it represents a whole chain. And when that hydrogen economy takes off, the car industry will have no choice but to go along with it.For those who can't wait any longer: the Mirai will be on your doorstep for 80,925 euros, the Hyundai Nexo goes for 69,995 euros (by the way, be careful with that exhaust water anyway, it's so pure it can make us sick). If, on the other hand, you want to wait and see what happens, you might want to buy a model car with a real hydrogen fuel cell. For 69.95 euros, the beautiful Horizon Hydrocar FCJJ-11 will be delivered to your door. So you can get used to it.
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